DISQUS

darknite · 2 years ago

Variable pricing is a joke. Studios say they want to offer older vintage, or not as popular shows at a discount.

Sure, that sounds great, until you realize the 'junk' that nobody wants will not be at a lower price, it will be at $1.99

The popular stuff will go at $2.99. $3.99, and $4.99. They don't want to lower the price on less popular shows, they want to hyper inflate the price of currently popular stuff.

If current hot shows stayed at $1.99, and older stuff was available at .49-.99 well, that would be a great reason for variable pricing, but that won't happen.

Lets not even go to the place that mentions the current TV shows are paid for by advertising, and available for free over broadcast TV. So, NBC gets paid once by advertisers, some more by iTunes customers, and again when customers purchase the DVD box set. NBC is just a greedy control freak.

Yeah, Apple and SJ are bigger control freaks, but their uniform pricing doesn't hurt the customers.

Louis Wheeler · 2 years ago

This is just a disagreement over marketing. The Music and Media Giants and Apple have a different marketing plan from Apple. The Giants want to wring every dime out of its customers; that is why they have long favored a strong DRM and variable pricing. Apple's vision is to move to a unit pricing and no DRM.

The question that you miss asking here is ,"What do the Music and Media customers want?" The customers have long rejected the Music and Media Giants plans. We will find out soon who wins.

NBC's move to Amazon will succeed or not. We'll see how flexible the customers want to be.

Sandeep · 2 years ago

"But would variable pricing be such a bad thing? Why shouldn’t users be able to pay less for the crappy stuff and more for the really in-demand content?"

Psychology of Economics 101. Price is an indicator/signal for quality, low pricing for a show would actually reduce the demand for it! This is why theaters price the summer blockbuster same as the summer flop.

-S

Matt · 2 years ago

Why is Apple so opposed to differential pricing?

Apple is in the business of selling iPods and if you upset the Applecart (sorry) and increase the price of the content hipsters want to buy, the sales of iPods go down .

Also I personally think this is a smart move by NBCU to move away from the monopoly that is iTunes .Also remember that Amazon Unbox also works with TIVO and will probably more open to things like subscriptions and season passes and other types of bundling .eg but the season and get a free rental of this movie .

Matt · 2 years ago

The Labels and Networks are finally taking notice of the Long Tail and the stuff in their vaults and in this post from 2005 Chris Anderson sells out clearly why varible pricing is needed for digial media .

http://www.longtail.com/the_long_tail/2005/08/c...